Wildlife Volunteer in South Africa

Wildlife ACT was founded and has always existed to support real conservation work where it is needed most. Numerous Game Reserves within South Africa cannot afford to fund a dedicated monitoring team within their boundaries, due to budget limitations and staff shortages. Wildlife ACT has come to these reserves with the proposal to provide this priority species Monitoring service, free of charge, in order to ensure the safety of these endangered species.

Our projects have been approved and contracted directly by the Management authority of each Reserve, to perform this critical and essential conservation work for those Reserves, at no cost to the reserve themselves. We are therefore 100% dependent on funding from paying conservation volunteers, in order to perform the work we are doing in South Africa. As a Wildlife ACT conservation volunteer you can actively help endangered and priority wildlife species conservation.

The reserves on which we work mainly focus on research into African Wild Dog, Cheetah, Black Rhino and Vultures; however, Elephant, Lion, Leopard and White Rhino are also monitored. We are the only conservation volunteer organisation in South Africa who are supported by and working with high profile organisations such as the WWF, the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), the Wildlands Conservation Trust and other well known conservation NGO’s, as well as working with Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife (the provincial conservation authority). We are also officially contracted by the international wild cat organisation, Panthera, to conduct Leopard monitoring surveys within KwaZulu-Natal.

Zululand is recognized as one of the most biodiverse wildlands in Africa, with much of it declared a World Heritage Site. Conservation volunteers work across 5 unique parks – most of them nationally proclaimed reserves. For every 2 weeks that you join us as a volunteer, you have the opportunity to live and work on a different park. Our work focuses on endangered and priority species including the African Wild Dog, Cheetah, Rhino, Lion, Elephant, Leopard and Vulture.

Wildlife ACT is officially contracted by the international wild cat organisation, Panthera, to conduct Leopard population surveys within South Africa. This involves conducting a number of exciting, short-term Leopard Population Surveys using remote camera trapping survey methods. The survey is the largest on leopards of its kind in the world where we’re working together with provincial parks to help inform management to improve leopard conservation.